Commentary on popular culture and society, from a (mostly) psychological perspective

Monday, October 11, 2010

The Philadelphia Enquirer: "Colleges struggle to recruit more men" (via Instapundit). Take a look at the comments, they are pretty interesting. Most notable are that the men (and some women) are fighting back and not allowing the other commenters to get away with their blatant sexism.

32 Comments:

I began attending as an old guy, so my views will be different. But even when talking with the young guys and even in engineering, there is a sense that we are not welcome. Beyond just having a social sense, I saw it in how the information was presented and tested. Further, professors changed how they tested and taught after the first midterm(s) in order to not favor us. Even the dull among us caught on after a the first year.

I saw a lot of guys simply decide school wasn't worth the hassle. I finally gave in too, if I also have other issues. And this is just one area that is anti male. the anti-white crowd is out there. The anti-American and anti-free market (what would engineering be without the free market or a nation of laws... China or India, is what). You can keep college. I am not sure it can be fixed at this point.

I agree with many of the commenter in the article. A college degree really doesn't mean a lot. I spent 20 years in the US Coast Guard and retired with a good pension at 39. I'm now working and making good money as a Texas registered paramedic. Thats a tech degree here. A licensed paramedic here has a college degree and makes the same money as me. If I had to do it over and get the degree I'd go RN for the same amount of time spent getting the degree. It would be more money and better operating conditions than a field paramedic.

I agree that boys and men are being shortchanged, but I disagree strongly with the notion that the answer is to treat boys and girls as dramatically different from each other. Each student is unique and it has nothing to do with gender. Let's focus on each student's individual needs without lumping everyone into one of two categories. When I hear someone explain how "boys' education" should be run, all I can think is how much I would hate that were I still in elementary school.

I agree that boys and men are being shortchanged, but I disagree strongly with the notion that the answer is to treat boys and girls as dramatically different from each other. Each student is unique and it has nothing to do with gender. Let's focus on each student's individual needs without lumping everyone into one of two categories. When I hear someone explain how "boys' education" should be run, all I can think is how much I would hate that were I still in elementary school.

Alerted by media reports that some admissions officers may be accepting less-qualified male students over female applicants, the Civil Rights Commission is investigating whether women are being discriminated against in college admissions. (From the article)

Ironic LOL. 20-30 years ago this was called affirmative action. But, it was the white males being discrimated against. The hypocrisy of the left rears its ugly head again.

Why are there more women than men in college? The answer is simple once you accept reality:" Because there are more women qualified for college than there are men.* "

A truth that few people are willing to accept is that there are fundamental differences between the sexes/genders/whateverPCterm. One of those differences is level of diversity. Quite simply: for every measured human trait, men have a larger standard deviation than women. This is true of height, weight, IQ, anything. The reasons why this happens is debatable, but the truth that it does happen is not. Quite simply, mother nature is smart enough to not waste a specie's reproductive potential on environment testing.

So what does this diversity mean? That means as you go to the extremes of human experience, you will find more men than women. I'll use IQ as the example trait (because it's the only one that still gets enough controversy that you can find studies about it, for every other trait it is simply accepted fact). IQ's above 170 are 30:1 male:female. Geniuses are much more likely to be men. Of course, retards are also much more likely to be men. But it's not even the extremes: SD on IQ is 15 points, median is 100 points, and looking at IQ's of 120 and above (or 80 and below) which are barely outside of 1 gender-averaged SD you will find 6:1 men. Simply put, women are much more likely to be average than men, which is a good thing because it helps the survival of the species.

* 70% of HS students go to college. Much as the top 30% is dominantly men, so is the bottom 30%. That means out of the "top 70%" which go to college, there are more women than men in that group. Because even below average HS students go to college, the pool of students going to college is more women than men.

BTW - Demonspawn - your hypothesis seems to be incorrect, especially when you look at this page. The curve for male IQs is slightly flatter and slightly skewed towards the higher end. The top 70% of students, as measured by IQ, would have a slightly higher number of males.

I like this paragraph from the link above: Let it suffice to point out the analogy of height differences: Men are taller on average than women. If one does not like the situation, one cannot seriously accuse the height-measuring device of being biased. Many people have been influenced by anti-IQ reporting in the media, and politically correct writings by authors such as Stephen J. Gould to think that if IQ tests show an inequality it is obvious evidence that they are biased. There are ways of measuring test bias and merely showing that there is a difference between groups is not enough.

While it is true, that measurements cannot be convicted, the use of those measures can and should be.

For example, if women lean more into the want within academia, the problem is that educated women produce poorer mothers (number of children). Some say this is a good thing, in America. That it lead to wealth. If that were true, we would not have an invasion of illegal immigrants. Essentially, we are outsourcing our population production, not slowing the population except in the short run. Same with wealth, creating a dying population is not a path to economic stability, just a bunch of spoiled children who can't count. More, pushing for educational outcomes that biases those who would be mothers cuts out the potential for advantage that allows fathers to attract and keep a mate, let alone a job.

Our children and, even our potential for successive generations, have been slaughtered on the alter of "success". And what a poisonous success it is turning out to be. Thankfully, I will probably be dead before I have to see the culmination of the many disasters.

We may not, completely, be animals. But we are indeed part animal. When you mess with the natural order, it always come to disaster. Scientists know far less than they know, and can implement even less.

The fact that academia is saturated with women is just another reason, if one more were needed, for a man not to waste time in higher education.

I personally avoid girlie things like cats, book clubs, psych classes, the art and style sections of the NYT, and chick fliks. There are two pleasures where women are essential: dancing and its horizontal version.

They are regularly absent in the higher reaches of computer science, physics, math, economics and chess. Last year saw a woman admitted for the first time to the highest rung in economics and chess. We will no doubt see more and more women take up politics, since POTUS, SCOTUS and COTUS are maintained remarkably free of anyone who is accomplished in science, math, engineering or economics, not to mention chess.

There is no discrimination or affirmative action in chess. If strangeoid Bobby Fisher could make it, so can a woman. Why aren't there a few, at least?

Evolution has perfected women for consoling men and baby-nurturing, and logic has it that it will take generations for them to learn how to use a left-handed monkey wrench, much less master chess as men do.

Now that the world is severely overpopulated, making further breeding questionable if not criminal, wise women will learn to compete in men's fields. Sadly, I am far too old to ever expect to find a woman to play chess with, so I'll just have to stick to friendships involving horizontal and vertical dancing.

As a parent, if I am going to send my daughter to a college I would like to feel that there were about as many boys as girls so that my lass would have dates etc and not have to compete for a date as though it were Miss America beauty contest.

Want more guys in your college? Easy. Offer nice scholarships to cut down their costs and do not give as generously to women or whatever you have more than enough of.

If more and more guys do not go to college they can learn trades and make decent money doing that. Women are much less likely to be in the trades for some time to come.

"The fact that academia is saturated with women is just another reason, if one more were needed, for a man not to waste time in higher education."

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It's almost no longer an intellectual pursuit. Engineering and physics are ... still ... but all of the social and psychological stuff and the "studies" are just staffed with morons "teaching" morons. They are just passing along myths and unexamined ideas, and it really is the opposite of what a university should be. But their daddies are all still paying for it, for whatever reason, and the taxpayers and daddies are pumping billions and billions into the system.

What I wonder is: Why on earth would some man pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for his daughter to get a stupid "women's studies" degree from one of the Seven Sisters or an Ivy League school. Utterly incomprehensible. And then she can call her father a stupid chauvanistic pig on top of it.

"Why on earth would some man pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for his daughter to get a stupid "women's studies" degree from one of the Seven Sisters or an Ivy League school. Utterly incomprehensible. And then she can call her father a stupid chauvanistic pig on top of it."

Because if he didn't, he would be raked over the coals as a bigoted Neanderthal whose thinking is governed by stereotypes and who clearly hates women. The PC definition of feminism is that men and women should be treated equally. Arguably, however, the real definition of feminism is that women should have options and men should have obligations. This BS about equality is just that, BS.

Interesting study. I honestly find it a little hard to swallow considering that they found no discrepancy in SD between men and women (and every previous study has found said discrepancy) so I'll need to look more into the study to find out why that differs so much.

But, anyways, I am not presenting the differing SD at the sum-total explanation for why there are more women than men in college today. I agree that men are driven away from college and education in general. My main point was that even if we eliminated those factors, I still don't think we'd see a 50/50 split between men and women when 70% of students go to college; I still feel we'd see more women in college.

I think part of the lack of men in college is due to the feminization of the early scholastic systems. Schools are set up for passive, compliant learners in the early grades, then a lack of discipline makes high school all but useless to kids who actually want to learn.

What is a boy to do? Boys get the message that they are stupid because they do not fit the NEA approach to teaching and school. Actually, it is the approach that does not fit the children.

So boys get the mistaken idea that they are not fit for school when it is actually the school that is not fit for them. But then that fits into the whole progressive meme that sees biologically intact people, men especially, as unwieldy and impediments to the progress of encroaching government and the nanny state.

Helen, on a side note, it took me three attempts to post that comment. I always copy my posts into the clipboard because Blogger routinely eats the first attempt, but more recently Blogger seems to destroy the first two attempts to post.

The problem isn't necessarily the schools, it's the voters. The voters demand schools perform. The only way one can measure a school's progress and a student's progress is through test taking. We love it when students take tests, lots and lots of tests. Teachers learn the tests are important. The students who do well on test are the ones that succeed in academia. Hence, quiet, compliant, quicklearners do best in school. Mind you, I am female, but I do absolutely horrible with the whole business of being quiet and compliant. However, many girls tend to excel in those areas than many boys. If we want to blame anyone for this challenge we should look in the mirror.

Last week I was talking to a woman who lives in Daytona Beach. She was telling me about the high school her son attends. It has some sort of marine program where the kids get into a boat and study water quality and marine life. This got me thinking about a school here in Baltimore that does the same thing.

As you know by now I love large shore birds and spend a great deal of time watching them. Because of this I also notice what is going on with the boats. The school here in Baltimore where kids get to spend time on the water is called Living Classrooms. It is a special school for badly behaved students that don't do well sitting still and have criminal issues. They go to this special school and learn the skill s to build boats, sail boats, steer boats, study marine life and spend time outdoors learning stuff. If I had to go to school I would want to go to Living Classrooms. I watch the Living Classroom students in their boats and they look excited and interested.

These are the only school children I see out there off-shore on the water. There are no other boats with students in them. If you are good student, behave well, please your teachers you don't get to build boats and learn interesting stuff. You get to sit in a stuffy classroom learning by rote memorization boring stuff and then you get to take standardized tests. Does anyone else see the problem here?

I do absolutely horrible with the whole business of being quiet and compliant.

LOL. I believe you completely.

My son, presently a high school senior, does quite well on the achievement tests and overall in school. He still finds school, the classroom part, generally a negative experience. A lot of it seems to have to do with female teachers and male students. He's felt like on more than one occasion a female teacher had it out for him but has never had a problem with a male teacher. Generally, I've found teachers to be smug and condescending when it comes to behavior "problems." Of course, this has always been female teachers as no male teacher has ever had a complaint with any of my kids.

Bacon, sorry I missed the sarcasm. I hate it when I do that! And there is a fair amount of fear and distrust of women expressed here. For the most part, I think the guys come by it honestly.

I have an invisible Escalade. That is how much it cost to keep my former wife from taking our daughter out of state so that I could not spend time with her. I am part of Tennessee case law as winning in the local courts was not enough for my former wife to understand that she lost the case. If it were not for my relationship with God and my WONDERFUL wife of 11 years, I would be struggling with misogyny too.